


The Listening Sky

by Fahye



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-03
Updated: 2008-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-08 06:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/pseuds/Fahye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And then," he says, "life goes on."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cirrus

**Author's Note:**

> Epigraph from [this poem](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem78.html) by Stephen Spender.

_Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields_  
 _See how these names are feted by the waving grass_  
 _And by the streamers of white cloud_  
 _And whispers of wind in the listening sky_.  
 _The names of those who in their lives fought for life_  
 _Who wore at their hearts the fire's center_.  
 _Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,_  
 _And left the vivid air signed with their honor._

 

When Naruto closes his eyes he can just about imagine two moves into any hypothetical situation -- perhaps _this_ and then perhaps _that_ and then his attention unravels like a loose thread, because in a fight he thinks with his muscles and with the hot bright rush of chakra but never with anything so difficult as words.

"And then?" Kakashi says, testing him.

"And then I'd think of something else."

Kakashi sighs; Naruto grins, unconcerned, because perhaps he doesn't treat his battles as though he's playing a game of shogi, but it's very seldom that he meets a present moment he can't fight his way out of.

~

"Excuse me, can you -- down here? Thank you!"

It takes him longer than expected to find the house, largely because Sakura's hand-drawn map is terrible and he didn't dare point this out to her face when she gave it to him. And even when he knocks on what he thinks is the right door, it's answered by an eight-year-old in pyjamas.

"Name?" Her voice is raspy and high-pitched, yet surprisingly professional.

"Naruto." He grins at her. "What's yours?"

"Yumi! Back to bed, young lady!" The woman who appears from a nearby room, wiping her hands on a cloth, looks to be in her mid-thirties. She has the girl's brown eyes and her hair is almost as long as Neji's. "You're going to infect my clients, or make yourself sicker, or both."

Yumi's eyes swivel appealingly towards Naruto, but she heaves a sigh that degenerates into a coughing fit and then disappears through another door.

"Hyaolan Miori." The woman beckons him in with a smile and a tilt of her head. "You'll be Uzumaki Naruto, then?"

"That's me!"

"You're late."

"Ah, yeah." He chuckles. "I got a bit lost. Sorry, Dr Hyaolan --"

"Miori." She pulls a band from her wrist and uses it to tie her hair into a low ponytail. "I'm not a doctor. And I don't need to feel any older, thank you."

"Not a doctor? But Sakura said you would help heal my hand."

"I'm a physical therapist. Of a rather specialised kind."

"Okay." Naruto has no idea of the distinction, but he tries to look contrite, because the woman reminds him alarmingly of Tsunade in her snappy professional moods.

"Sit." Miori directs him into a soft, comfortable armchair and pulls a table up in front of him. "The note I got about your injury said something about overuse of a technique that requires vast amounts of chakra. It also said something about you being a stubborn idiot who doesn't know when to stop, but I assume that was Sakura venting." She gives a small smile that takes the edge off her words.

"Er." He puts his hand on the table and starts to unwrap the bandages. "Yes. I mean, I can move it all right by now, but it's still difficult to control chakra."

"First of all." Miori hands him a small familiar card. "I need you to --"

"Oh." Naruto grins and hands it back to her intact. "Wind. I'm wind."

She raises her eyebrows, looking surprised but gratified. "You wouldn't believe how many ninjas don't know their own chakra type."

As she's putting the card away in a drawer, Naruto catches sight of a picture nearby: Miori, quite a few years younger, with her head on the shoulder of a smiling man wearing the Konoha hitai-ate and a jounin vest. "Is this your husband? I can't remember seeing him around."

"Yes. Put your other hand on the table, too, please. Both palms upwards, and don't move them." She pulls another chair up opposite him and puts a few more things on the table: two mirrors hanging on small stands, and a cup full of water. For a moment she fiddles with Naruto's hands, pulling them into symmetry, her eyes fixed on the table. Then she says, "He died five years ago on a mission."

"Oh. I'm very sorry." Naruto feels a rush of sympathy for her.

Miori gives an awkward shrug. "I married a ninja. It was only to be expected." She keeps her eyes averted, carefully moving the mirrors into place over Naruto's hands, and then sneaks a quick glance at the picture. "Suyama wasn’t the best shinobi in Konoha or even _one_ of the best, but...he worked hard. He was so proud when he finally made jounin."

"He sounds like a great guy."

"Mmm." Miori adjusts the angle of the mirrors one more time and then settles in her own seat. "He was the first ninja I'd met who didn't treat me like a civilian."

"Huh? But...you are a civilian."

"But that's not all I am." Naruto is used to people warming to him and then warming even more, but there's something disapproving in her voice now, as though she has taken a mental step backwards.

"I know!" he puts in quickly. "I...ah." He feels the urge to scratch the back of his head and look sheepish, but doesn't want to move his hands, so he settles for ducking his chin. "I certainly wasn't trying to imply that that was all you were! Or are!"

"All right, kiddo." She taps the back of his hand with her fingertips. "As well as the physical damage done to your hand, you've probably managed to scramble some of the chakra channels. This should help clear out that tangled chakra so that you can manipulate it as usual. I want you to direct chakra from your left hand at the mirror above it. Concentrate, and don’t use too much -- force isn't important here."

"Right." Naruto had been expecting some kind of massage or boring instructions about exercises; this is something entirely new. He does as she told him, and --

"I can actually see it!"

"Yes." Finally, she smiles again. A thin flow of visible, mint-green chakra seems to be coming out of the left mirror, which is angled so that the flow hits his right hand and disappears. "You'll start to feel a buildup of chakra in your right hand, and eventually you'll be able to do the same thing -- direct it upwards -- with barely more than a nudge, even though it's wounded."

Naruto bites at the inside of his cheek and concentrates. Sure enough, a familiar pressure starts to develop in his right hand, something he hasn't been able to manage since the fight. When he nudges the chakra upwards, the right-hand mirror develops its own stream of green; this one is thinner and more twisted than the one on the left, and the mirror is angled so that it flows into the cup of water. Naruto has no idea what's going on, but it's _really cool_.

"How does this work?"

"Do you know what this is?"

He's about to say no, but then he recognises the surface on the back of the mirror that she's indicating. "That's...that's the metal that absorbs chakra, isn't it?"

"Yes. Polish it for long enough with the right materials, and you can change its properties from absorption to reflection: the chakra hits it and becomes visible, and can be directed anywhere you like. It allows for greater directional control than if I'd simply asked you to touch your hands together, and this --" she indicates the cup "-- is a way of disposing of the tangled chakra from your wounded hand. Water has a great capacity to absorb chakra and render it inert."

"So...you're replacing the tangled chakra from my wounded hand with normal chakra from the other one?"

"Pretty much."

"That's amazing!" Naruto grins. "I've never heard of this kind of thing before."

"Well, it's not really a very useful technique for anything but therapy. A ninja can't control their chakra once it's hit the mirror, so it's no use as a weapon."

"But it looks awesome." Certainly it's different to the sharp blue of battle chakra; it's closer to the soft green of healing jutsu, and watching it ripple gently as sunlight and shadows move across it is almost relaxing.

"I'm glad you think so." She leans back in her chair, looking more at ease now. "I trained somewhere else, actually; most therapists, the ones who don't live in the Hidden Villages, use acupuncture and massage. But I see a lot of unique kinds of injury in Konoha because of the effects of particular jutsus, so I've started to develop my own techniques."

After the first few punches and scoldings from Sakura, Naruto learned to affect interest during theoretical discussions of medical techniques no matter how dull he found them, but right now he's genuinely curious. "Why did you need to know my chakra type?"

"Ah." She gives a small, rueful quirk of lips. "This took me a long time to realise, but the surface of the mirror needs to be defined for a particular chakra type, or it’ll only reflect to a very weak extent."

In most jutsu, defining something involves a concrete naming. Naruto leans closer and peers at the edges of the mirrors, and eventually he sees the miniscule symbol for ‘wind’ engraved in each corner. "What about bloodline limits?"

"They’re annoying to work with. If someone just has the ability to use more than one type of chakra, then a mirror defined for any of those types is fine. But if they can use both at _once_ , then their chakra signature is unique. You have to define a whole new set of mirrors especially to suit them, which means a higher materials cost, which means I get accused of discrimination against the old clans..." She makes an unimpressed face. "But that’s ninjas for you."

Naruto’s about to argue against this generalisation when he remembers something. "I'm sorry if I offended you earlier. With the comment about you being a civilian."

Miori sighs. "You’ve got your prejudices, I’ve got mine."

"I’m not prejudiced!" he protests.

"What you forget, kiddo, is that you live in a village where being a ninja is the norm. It’s what the society is built on. And I’m not denying that you serve a vital function. But it can be hard to be a civilian in a Hidden Village, especially when you know what life is like in the rest of the country where _ninjas_ are the odd ones out."

"I guess...I never thought of it like that." Wow, _now_ he feels like a total ass.

"Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to attack you about this. It’s hardly professional of me."

"No! It’s fine!" He makes a decent stab at a reassuring grin. "I’m glad you’re talking to me, about the chakra therapy and the civilian thing and everything. It’s more fun that way."

"All right." She nods and the distance is gone from her voice, which is a relief. "Just keep in mind that it sometimes seems like civilians are nothing to you people until you need us to sell you a bowl of ramen or make you a new set of kunai. And that you don’t have to be a trained fighter to have strength."

"I know. There are lots of kinds of strength." He’s on familiar ground here. He looks her in the face and sits up a little straighter. "Anything else?"

"Any more bitching I want to get out of my system? Well, I never expected to find such a receptive audience in a shinobi," she teases, and Naruto feels the warm satisfaction of having won over a new friend. "To be honest, I don’t like that you’re here in the first place. You’re what, sixteen? Around there?" At his nod, she continues, gesturing towards his wounded hand. "That’s the other thing about the Hidden Village society. All of the normal childhood parameters are completely warped, so at the age when you’re supposed to just be _kids_ , you’re being trained to expect and to accept death and danger. All Yumi’s ever wanted is to be like her father, so I couldn’t exactly keep her out of the Academy, but...it doesn’t mean I’m completely happy with her choice. "

The idea that someone might not want to be a ninja, or might not want that for their children, is so strange that Naruto can’t think of anything to say. He frowns at his hands, trying to fit Miori and her opinions into the way he thinks about the world, and in doing so he notices something alarming.

"I can't move my fingers!"

She nods. "Don’t worry, that’s normal. Have you noticed that you don’t have to consciously direct the chakra at the mirrors any more, too?"

Now that she mentions it... "Yeah. Huh."

"It acts as a chakra drain," she explains. "Once it's detected your chakra, the metal keeps sucking it away, leaving just enough for basic tissue functions. Not enough for muscle contraction, and definitely not enough that you could gather it to perform any jutsus." When she smiles this time, it’s widely enough that a pair of very faint dimples appear. They make her look younger. "If I had a big enough mirror, I could get you to sit still for as long as I wanted."

Something about that collides in Naruto’s head with what she said about unique chakra signatures and together they create...sparks. He wonders if this is how Shikamaru feels all the time, because it’s like the idea is looping itself together out of random words and potential events and dancing for his attention, and if he’s got this right -- and he thinks he _does_ \-- then all they need is a way to produce something out of thin air.

And they're ninjas, so they've already got that.

Naruto's blood is roaring in his ears and he can feel a huge grin twitching its way onto his face.

"What's gotten into you, kiddo?" Miori asks. "You look like you're about to burst into song."

"Nothing." Naruto's the worst singer in the universe but yes, he feels like singing. Like screaming. Like throwing things into the air and not caring if they ever come down.

He thinks: _just you wait, Sasuke. Just you wait._

"It's nothing. I just thought of something interesting."

~

Naruto knows that half a page of one of Sai's sketchbooks contains neat jottings and more than a few sentences with lines through them, remnants of a conversation they once had about the nature of bonds.

 _So you'd do anything for Sakura?_ Sai asked.

_Yes._

_And what about Sasuke?_

Naruto smiled. _Anything._

Sai stared at the page for almost a full minute before saying, _That seems incompatible._

And then he said, _What if you had to make a choice?_

Naruto considers himself to be not _entirely_ unaware of his shortcomings -- he knows he can lack perception, and it was only in this moment that he realised that Sakura had carefully rearranged her priorities around his, so he never once had to make a difficult choice. Ever since his return to Konoha she had been adjusting their orbits, little by little, to ensure that Sasuke could remain at the centre of their universe.

The point...the point is that Sakura, too, was left behind by Sasuke, and Naruto doesn't think he can remember anything greater than the way it feels to be able to give her hope.

"I think this could actually work, Naruto." She's chewing on her lower lip, the wind tossing her hair across her face and the sun finding sparks in her eyes, and she looks jubilant. "What did Tenten say when you asked her about object summoning?"

Naruto stretches out on his back, wriggling a little to get comfortable in the grass. The sky has clouds scattered across it, patches of pearly grey set against a high thin blue. "She said that yeah, it’s the naming that’s important. The weapons she summons have to actually exist somewhere, they can’t just be created out of nothing, and if she carves a unique symbol on each one then she can incorporate the symbols into the summoning seals."

"I think I remember Iruka teaching us about that." Sakura looks down at him with a half-teasing, half-preaching expression on her face. "If I recall correctly, you spent the entire lesson trying to sabotage Sasuke’s notes by drawing stupid pictures on them."

"He hated that." Naruto laughs, remembering.

"He’ll really hate not being able to move." Sakura’s voice is soft; it has a question and a warning layered through it. "And I don’t like the idea of doing that to anyone, let alone Sasuke."

"This is the only way," Naruto says, just as softly. He doesn’t much like the idea of it either, but for the first time in months he is starting to feel like they could have a real chance. "I can't beat him, Sakura. I can't even _find_ him, and even if I could, he'd just run away again. I can't make him listen to me when he's trying so hard to have nothing to do with Konoha."

Sakura winces and looks to the side, but only for a moment. "All right." Her voice gets stronger. "All right. Let's do it."

"He doesn't have to like it." Naruto finds within himself the remnants of an anger that he discovered a long time ago above a thundering waterfall; the capacity to fight, and yes, to inflict suffering on someone he loves, if it's the only way to get through to them. "He just has to listen."

~

At the next mirror-therapy session he tells Miori about Sasuke, because she told him about Suyama and it seems like a fair exchange, especially if they're going to ask her to help them bring him back. The telling takes a while -- okay, so maybe Naruto gets a little vehement in some sections -- and at the end of it Miori frowns.

"No offense meant to you, kiddo, but he _doesn't_ sound like a great guy."

"Well…" Naruto frowns. He's never expected to have to sell Sasuke as a _concept_ ; he wouldn't even know where to begin.

Miori chuckles while he's still struggling with the idea that maybe Sasuke isn't all that great a person, because...well, he's never thought about it that way before. Sasuke is Sasuke.

"Life's really done a number on you, Naruto."

"Huh?"

"You were thirteen," she points out, and while she still looks amused it's now tempered with sympathy. "Thirteen is the age when you're just starting to redefine your social relationships to take things like puberty and hormones into account, and your most important one was left completely unresolved. You were angry at him for leaving, you were attached to him in the consuming way that adolescents get attached to things, and nothing's been allowed to change or develop since that day. No wonder you're so driven."

"I don't --" How to say this? Ugh. Naruto is starting to warm to Sasuke's method of just not talking about emotions _ever_. "You're making it sound unhealthy. He's my _best friend._ It'd be weird if I didn't want him back."

"It is a bit unhealthy." She reaches around the mirror apparatus and the streams of chakra and pats his arm. "But it's clearly what works for you. I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't love the guy, I'm just pointing out that you've been kind of screwed over when it comes to ever moving on and loving anyone else."

Bizarrely, that makes Naruto feel quite a bit better.

"Good morning!"

"Sakura." Miori turns her smile towards the door. "What are you doing here?"

"Naruto and I have a proposal for you."

Miori listens through to the end, tolerating their frequent repetitions and interruptions and the stilted way they toss the thread of the idea back and forth between them. Naruto explains some parts better than others; Sakura fills in pieces of the theory.

"Every person _does_ have a unique chakra signature." Her voice goes high and breathy when she’s excited. Naruto smiles. "Some people are able to sense and identify others by it. But it’s very complex, and most aspects of it are not able to be formally defined in the same way that the elemental type is."

"And summoning only works if the object defined is unique, so for most people, trying to define their chakra signature by element type wouldn’t work: the seal would apply to _everyone_ who is wind-type or water-type or whatever, and nothing would happen. And even for bloodline limits, the summons would apply to the entire clan. But there are only _two_ Uchihas...so all we need to do is narrow it down from two to one." Naruto opens his hands in a triumphant gesture. "It wouldn’t work on anyone else in the world. But it might work on Sasuke."

"Fire and lightning." Sakura sounds almost awed. "I guess it’s not really surprising; the Uchihas have always been incredibly powerful."

"What type are you, Sakura?" he asks, suddenly curious.

"Water. Tsunade told me that a lot of people with the talent for medical ninjutsu are water type. It's just a slightly different manifestation of the chakra type than the water-based battle jutsus."

"I'd have pegged you as earth." Naruto grins. "What with your ability to smash cliffs."

She laughs. "No. The strength is non-specific -- it's got more to do with personal chakra control than any one element. I could smash ice just as easily. I think Sai's an earth type, though. His art techniques are about the manipulation of very small molecules."

"Wow." Naruto blinks. How _neat_. "Does that mean Team Kakashi has one person of each type in it?"

"Nicely balanced." Miori looks approving. "I don't know a lot about ninjutsu tactics, but I'd imagine that creates a strong fighting unit. And a strong relationship."

"It will, when we have our fire ninja back." Sakura looks at Naruto and they share something quiet, something to do with the fact that they're the only two people for whom it has always been _when_ and never _if_. "But we still need something extra so that it’s a unique summons. Using his name might be enough considering that we’re only trying to eliminate one of two options, but I was thinking..." She flickers her fingers uncomfortably near her neck. "The curse seal. It’s an easy symbol to include."

"What about a personal possession?" Miori frowns. "Something that might have a residual chakra signature. Some of the people with tracking jutsus can work from a piece of clothing."

Naruto’s breath catches. "Yes -- yes," he says. "I think I have something that could work."

"I’m impressed. I never thought that you’d get so much out of my therapy research," Miori says. "I mean, I was considering trying to extend it to improving the effect of chakra transfusion by using element type -- like blood transfusions, you know -- but it could be dangerous to test and I don’t even know if it would work properly."

"But could you find out? If you had enough people, and you were testing it in a controlled environment? I could ask Tsunade about funding." Sakura's vigorous nod sends strands of pink hair flying across her face. "I think she'd be very interested, it's certainly got potential for field use --"

"I suppose so." And now they've both got that expression on their faces that Naruto recognises from Sakura's conversations with Tsunade, the ones where they start off using normal words and then degenerate into indecipherable medical terms and enthusiastic hand-waving. "If I wrote up a proposal --"

"Hey!" Naruto grabs Sakura’s shoulder and gives it a brief shake, just about fed up with the both of them: why they’re happy to keep chattering away about nothing in particular when _they're about to bring Sasuke back_ is entirely beyond him. "Sasuke first, crazy chakra research later."

"Researching clinical applications is not _crazy_ , Naruto! How do you think medi-nins develop all of their --" She takes a deep breath and the homicidal glint vanishes from her eyes. "Okay. Sasuke first."

"I can get the materials, though it'll take time to acquire a chakra mirror that's big enough. I'll contact you through the hospital, Sakura. And you!" Miori turns to Naruto. "Don't try anything fancy with that hand of yours. Let it heal."

"Sure, sure." Naruto will promise anything, do anything; his heart is so loud and so full that he thinks it might explode at any moment. But for now it just beats out Sasuke’s name, over and over, pulsing it through his veins.

~

The right words that he could have used to describe his feelings for Sasuke only occur to Naruto later; that’s always the way. He’s used to it. There are little things, like the fact that he knows what kind of ramen Sasuke orders and the fact that the Uchiha likes ramen a lot more than he ever admitted, because ramen was Naruto’s thing and in many ways they divided their world so that they could fight over it and share it at the same time.

And then bigger things, like the moment he realised that his own reasons for wanting Sasuke to come back were far greater than the simple need to keep his word to Sakura, even if he had no idea what those reasons were at the time.

Like knowing that everyone expected him to succeed not just because of who he was, or because of who Sasuke was, but because of what each of them became in the presence of the other.

Perhaps it would be easier to tell these things to other people, and perhaps it wouldn’t. But everyone knows that Uzumaki Naruto lives for Uchiha Sasuke; the whys and the hows and the exact emotions are incidental.

~

"So my job would be...to keep this a secret, correct?"

The truth is that for all his shortcomings Sai is one of them now, and even though a small juvenile part of Naruto wants this excitement and this project to stay between him and Sakura, they're teammates and Sai deserves their trust.

"Yes." He nods. "We want to tell Tsunade and Kakashi, of course, but...not until we can let him go. Not until we're sure he's going to stay." He doesn't say: Sasuke won't respond to orders.

He very especially doesn't say: this job is _mine_. Because almost three years ago, everyone he cared about expected him to be able to do a task, and he failed. And this time he's going to get it right.

Sai looks as though he's considering it, though it's always difficult to tell, with Sai. "What about this civilian woman? You trust her to keep the secret as well?"

"Yes." Naruto nods emphatically. "I like Miori, she's nice. She's good at advice. We should introduce her to Iruka!"

"Really? Because they are a similar sort of person?" Sai tilts his head. "I wasn't aware of this basis for romatic relationships."

Sakura shrugs. "It makes sense, doesn't it? Though really, Naruto, Iruka's a decade too young for Miori."

"Are you and Sasuke alike?" Sai asks him then.

"No." Naruto's face is hot; sometimes he suspects that his teammate is not quite as socially inept as he seems. "Not really."

"Oh," Sai says. "No, he didn't seem much like you. Does he ever smile?"

Naruto opens his mouth and then closes it, confused, and looks at Sakura for help. "Not...really?"

"You're right." Sakura blinks her way into looking as surprised as Naruto feels. Another of those things that they've always simply accepted and never thought to articulate. "He just looks amused. Usually at the stupidity or discomfort of others."

"Sometimes he smirks," Naruto hazards. "Does that count?"

"That isn't the point!" Sakura shoots her arm out, leaving one finger pointed at Sai with the deadly accuracy of a thrown kunai. "The point is that there aren't rules for this kind of thing. Some relationships work because the people are alike, and some...some are created by balance." She looks at Naruto with an expression that dares him to argue or to pity her. "And it's not like you and Sasuke have nothing in common. Neither of you can stand losing or backing down."

"That doesn't sound very constru--"

Sakura turns the full force of her I-dare-you expression onto Sai and he closes his mouth. "If it works," she says in a voice like cracking rock, "it works."

Naruto has the overwhelming urge to hug her, but his self-preservation instincts know better. Instead: "I love you," he blurts out, before his brain can get in the way. "You know that, right? I love you a lot. And you're very important to me."

Sakura's face is a deep pink. "But I'm not the _most_ important. I know." She says it without any hint of anger; he still feels as though he owes her an apology.

"Sakura --"

"Naruto." She looks at him in a way which he can't decipher at all; he's never been able to read her when she doesn't want him to, not to the same extent as he can read -- well. Maybe that's something in and of itself. "It's difficult to miss the fact that you think about Sasuke more than...more than _ramen_."

"I bet that's not true!" Naruto protests, uncomfortably aware that Sai is gazing at the both of them as though they're a fascinating exhibit. "I mean, I think about -- oh, you were being figurative."

"Hyperbolic, actually," Sai puts in.

Sakura sighs. "I'm as committed as you are to bringing him back, you know that, I just don't want to see you expect too much and get hurt. Do you think he...?"

"I don't know," Naruto says, because that's easiest. He's not sure how to convey the fact that his face has an expression tucked away somewhere that's partly a smirk and partly a scowl and wholly elicited by his best friend's presence, that his hands remember the precise angles of battle from when they fought on the same team, and that sometimes his whole body sings, bone-deep and true, with the memory of the way Sasuke's eyes used to slice through the air and find him. That after all these years he can still call up the image of Sasuke darting between his body and Haku's needles and _know_ that this is who Sasuke really is. Not the cold blank stare, and not the biting words, but this. "That's not important, anyway. What's important is that we get him back."

"All right. I won't tell anyone." Sai shrugs. "Would you also like me to come up with some plausible lies to explain your absences? They could include hormones, and enclosed spaces."

Sakura digs a firm elbow into Naruto's side, and he almost bites his tongue, but he does manage not to laugh or to yell in protest.

"Yeah. Sure." Naruto grins and claps him on the arm. "Thanks, Sai."

~

The mirror is enormous; it takes them almost an entire day, and Sakura asking her father a lot of awkward ‘hypothetical’ questions, to work out how to rig it in Miori’s tiny spare room.

"We can’t immobilise him immediately," Sakura points out. "He has to be using chakra beneath the mirror before it can become a drain, so it should be pointed away to begin with --"

"And then we can move it once he starts trying to fight his way out," Naruto finishes.

Miori looks up at the mirror. Her hair is coming out of its ponytail in untidy wisps. "I’ll do that. You two just make sure he doesn’t do too much damage in the meantime. I assume you’ll want him to be able to carry on a conversation, so I can angle it to cover his body only from the neck down."

Naruto frowns. "But...the Sharingan."

"Eye-based bloodline limit?" Miori shakes her head. "No. He just won’t have enough chakra in his body. He should be able to move his head, and speak, but no more than that."

"We’re going to see Sasuke again," Naruto blurts out, and wonders if he could sound any more idiotic if he tried. But the enormity of the situation has just hit him like the proverbial and unpleasant ton of bricks -- this is _it_ , this is the day they return Sasuke to Konoha -- and all of a sudden a feeling starts squirming around in his stomach, heavy and suffocating; almost like dread, which makes _no_ damn sense, because this is the one thing he's wanted for so long.

The one thing.

Naruto's throat closes up and he wishes frantically that for once in his life, just once, he'd bothered to plan ahead for the spaces between the present moment and the vague future day he becomes Hokage.

"Yes." Sakura's smile is simple, beautiful; spending so much time around Sai has made Naruto wary of false happiness, and hers is utterly true. Even through the rising panic, he thinks: she's amazing. "Today Sasuke comes home."

He manages to croak, "And then what?"

There have been fears and more fears in Naruto's life, but none so strange as this sudden terror of not-knowing; of not having _imagined_ the then-what beyond a wish for things to return to the way they were, even while knowing that to be impossible -- they've changed too much, all of them, and so has the world -- and even realising in hindsight that the way they were was, for Sasuke, obsessed and unwilling to hold onto happiness.

"Idiot." Sakura hits him across the back of the head, but the blow doesn't hurt and there's a rare note of fondness in her voice. "And then life goes on, obviously."

Naruto has admired Sakura and yes, loved her, but this moment is the very first in which he is envious of her. It could be a medical thing or just a Sakura thing: this tenacity only loosely associated with optimism, the simple determination that life will continue -- should be _made_ to continue -- for as long as possible, because anything else would be defeat.

"Okay!" He claps his hands into a basic seal, for emphasis, and to banish his own anxiety. No room for doubt or other distractions. "Let's do this."

In the end it's almost anticlimactic; like any summoning, most of the work is in the preparation. The strict, formal arrangement of symbols within the summoning syntax: fire, lightning, _Uchiha Sasuke_. Orochimaru’s curse seal. And the blue fabric of Sasuke's headband laid underneath the whole, the metallic edge of the hitai-ate only just visible. A personal possession, Miori had said, and as far as Naruto’s concerned this is about as damn personal as it gets.

"Ready?"

"When you are." Miori nods.

Naruto takes a deep breath, places his left hand flat on the seal, and pushes a wild burst of chakra into it.

There isn't a _poof_ \-- it's more like a sharp, painful _crack_ , really -- but when the air stops shimmering, Uchiha Sasuke is swaying on his feet in the middle of the room.

" _Fuck_ ," Sakura squeaks, and it's so incongruous that Naruto almost bursts out laughing.

"What --" Sasuke's eyes sweep around and alight on Naruto, linger a second, and then move on, and in one swift movement he unravels the fabric from around one of his arms.

"Quick, Miori!" Sakura cries, but Sasuke is faster than ever and his right hand is already folded strangely under his left forearm. Naruto moves on instinct almost before he sees the weapons, placing himself between Sasuke and Miori -- trust an Uchiha to pinpoint the most vital person in the room even while disoriented and trapped -- and he narrowly manages to block two kunai before Sasuke sucks in a sudden, shocked breath and then collapses to the floor. A handful of unthrown shuriken clatters down with him.

"Quick on his feet, isn't he?" Miori looks taken aback as she releases her grip on the mirror's edge.

"That's Sasuke." Naruto tries to force his heartbeat down from where it is thundering in his temples, and stares in fascination at the markings on Sasuke's bared arm.

Sakura's fingers, too, rest for a moment on the markings as she carefully works her arms under the unconscious boy's shoulders and legs and then starts to lift him. "Oh," she says sheepishly, after a moment of awkward straining. "The mirror. Naruto, come and grab his legs."

For a second Naruto isn't sure why that should matter, but then he glances at Miori with her wooden bucket and realises that Sakura's bursts of incredible strength, like any jutsu, require chakra. And that while even though the draining technique is designed to target Sasuke to the point of immobility, anyone else under the mirror will still have their ability to draw on their own chakra dampened.

"Careful." Miori nods her chin towards the bed. "I'm going to have to slide the mirror across as you go, so don't move him too fast."

Naruto nods, fascinated by the sight of the pale green energy that seems to come from the mirror itself and flow outwards in a constant shimmering stream. It's much more intense than that produced by his own mirror-therapy, and instead of soaking into a limb, Sasuke's chakra is dissipating slowly into the air. Naruto moves through a patch of it and it makes him want to sneeze.

Once Sasuke is on the bed and the mirror has been fixed in position, Miori moves the bucket of water so that the chakra disappears into it without so much as a ripple. "Done," she says. "To be honest, I'm almost surprised that it worked."

Sakura dusts off her hands and goes to lean against the older woman's side. "Thank you, Miori."

"Yes!" Naruto smiles at them both. "We couldn't have done this without you."

Miori swipes her hair out of her eyes and smiles back. "Don't thank me just yet," she says. She looks tired. "All I did was help you move him. It seems to me that getting him to _stay_ is going to be the real challenge."

Naruto nods, the doubt starting to flood back into him. He bends down to pull the headband out from under the seal.

"Chin up, kiddo." Miori leans closer and pats his shoulder. "If anyone can do it, you can."

~

Asleep, Sasuke looks -- well, not innocent. Not familiar. And yet not all that different either. What he does look is _tired_ , exhausted to the bone, his face slowly melting from anxiety into oblivion as though his expressions are losing their elasticity. Miori has changed him out of the purple cord ensemble and into one that includes a long, loose black shirt, and his face is a pale shock between the material and the spiked mess of his hair.

Naruto tucks his legs up under his chin, perched on the edge of one of Miori's soft chairs, and tries to convince himself that somewhere behind all of that strain and dismissal Sasuke remembers why he stayed in Konoha for as long as he did. Or at least that he's open to convincing; but Naruto could spend half a day coming up with adjectives to describe his best friend and 'open' wouldn't even make the preliminary shortlist.

"He's going to be out for a while." Sakura lifts her fingertips from Sasuke's temples. "I can't sense anything but his brain, of course, but I think having all his non-essential chakra wrenched away like that was enough to send his body into a self-defensive sleep to conserve its resources."

"Mmhm," Naruto agrees, not really engaged.

"What's the matter?" Sakura's voice drops from clinical appraisal into personal concern. "We did it, Naruto."

"Miori was right." He sighs and wraps his arms more tightly around his legs. "This is the hard part. What if I can't get him to stay? Everyone keeps saying I have the power to change people, but not when it matters. Not _him_."

He remembers: waking up in Kakashi's arms with fire in his head and water drenching his clothes, watching raindrops gather in the leaf symbol on a discarded hitai-ate and spill down over the metal, and feeling like he would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile ever again.

Sakura sighs and leans down to peer into his face, and for a moment Naruto is convinced she's going to rap her knuckles on his forehead and call him an idiot, but she just touches him on the cheek. "Naruto," she says gently. "Everyone keeps saying it because it's true. You _have_ changed Sasuke -- anyone with half a brain could see that he was happier being part of our team than he was when he was a child."

For a moment Naruto hears Miori saying, _you were thirteen_ , and thinks that maybe she has a point about the ninja world having warped parameters. When did they stop being children?

"And you might have failed to change his mind once, but when have you ever accepted a failure without trying again, and again?"

She's right; of course she's right, Sakura is always right; however, even through the flood of gratitude and relief, Naruto knows better than to tell her that. He'll admit to the single instance only. "Yes. You're right," he says, and pulls a grin onto his face.

Sakura smiles back, touches his cheek one more time and straightens up. "Besides," she adds, and now the satisfied glitter in her eyes is one that Naruto knows to be wary of, "he can't exactly run away from the sound of your voice, now, can he?"

~

There's one thing that needs to be said when Sasuke wakes up, so Naruto says it.

"I promised Sakura I'd find a way to bring you back. And I never go back on my word."

"Be quiet." Sasuke moves his head, testing the range of his mobility, and his eyes visibly follow the flow of chakra from the mirror into the water. "Interesting," he says after a while, and closes his eyes.

"It's a chakra drain." Naruto shifts uncomfortably on the chair, and even though Sasuke doesn’t appear to be paying attention at all, he explains the summoning technique and the concept of chakra signature. He doesn't mention the hitai-ate. When he's finished, there's a screaming silence in the room before Sasuke opens his eyes again and looks at Naruto for the first time.

"That's almost clever. But still pointless."

Naruto clenches his hands into fists so that he doesn’t hit the apathy off the bastard's face, because Sasuke can't fight back and there's no point to a rivalry if it's one-sided. No point to a one-sided _anything_ , and Sasuke's just _looking_ at him, and Naruto could slice his cheek open with a kunai with no effort at all, and for a wild moment he almost wants to do just that because at least Sasuke might react.

Sasuke laughs, low and cold, as though he knows exactly what Naruto's thinking. "Bringing me back so you can turn me into a useless piece of flesh. How brave of you."

"I told you," Naruto hisses, "I told you I'd bring you back if I had to break every bone in your body."

"And you never go back on your word."

Naruto looks at him in surprise, hope clawing viciously in his chest, but Sasuke's expression is as flat as his voice and there's no foothold there for any kind of hope, so it soon dies away. "That's right," he says anyway, but he doesn't know what to say next. There's too much and it's all too big. "You're back with us, and we've -- I mean, for _so long_ \-- you have to stay with us, Sasuke."

"I don't have to do anything you tell me to do," he says, eyes narrowed, suddenly and breathtakingly so very like the old Sasuke that Naruto's heart jerks. "What I _have_ to do is kill Itachi."

"You will. And we're going to help you." Naruto aims for a flat statement of fact instead of than his usual _I dare you to argue_ , because he knows better than to dare Sasuke anything unless he's in the mood for a fight.

"And then?" A brief flash of hatred and depression rises above his flat tone, but Naruto knows what it's like to lash out against that particular fear. And as a person standing in the bewildering space left by the recent completion of his life's goal, he stares Sasuke in the face with all the gravity he possesses -- turns the staring into a contest, because that's what's always worked, for them -- and knows that it is vital that Sasuke believes him in this moment. That he can convince his best friend to accept a truth he has only just begun to realise himself.

"And then," he says, "life goes on."


	2. Nimbus

The room is just like thousands of other rooms in thousands of houses, no doubt, but Sasuke hates it for the little things like the way the curtain sways in the breeze (asymmetrically) and the small patch of damp on the ceiling that is almost but _not quite_ the symbol on the hitai-ate of the Sand shinobi (the longer he stares at the differences, the more infuriating he finds them) and the way Naruto's voice seems to hit the room's corners and rebound straight at Sasuke's ears.

But Sasuke can be thankful for two things: the first is that it is easy to win a battle when you know your opponent's weaknesses, and the second is that there is nobody in the world he knows as well as Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto can argue up a storm but sooner or later he needs something to respond to, something to bounce off, or he just powers himself into the ground. So Sasuke keeps his expression blank and his mouth closed and he calls up image after image of Itachi's face and Itachi's sword covered in blood and Itachi's _damn_ eyes, remembering how sharply he has honed his hatred. Focus. Focus. With Orochimaru dead, everything is now secondary to this.

Off to his right, Naruto is saying something about friendship; he's kept up his one-sided debate longer than Sasuke thought he would, but his voice is losing confidence, and he'll give up and leave the room any minute now.

Sasuke gazes at the ceiling and imagines that the damp will spread a little to the right and then that angle will be a little sharper and then it'll look exactly as it should. He drowns Naruto's voice in the details. He holds onto his hatred, because it's the only thing that will work.

~

The woman called Miori gives him food and drink, which Sasuke swallows because he isn't stupid, and moves him onto his side occasionally -- "To prevent bedsores," she says, and Sasuke breaks his silence to tell her that his elbow is digging into his ribs. Again: he isn't stupid. When he's on his back he can look up at the mirror and follow the mint-green flow of his own chakra as far as the tilting of his head will allow; with his cheek flat on the pillow, he can see it disappearing into the water.

He keeps track of time by the movement of the sun, though soon the sunlight finds a crack in the curtains and skewers Sasuke's closed eyelids with painful rays, so when Sakura walks into the room his head is aching hideously even though the sun has since moved on.

He looks at her closely, taking in the changes, and then narrows his eyes in the cold dismissal that would have set her lower lip trembling three years ago. But Sakura holds his gaze without flinching, without saying a word, and sits down on the edge of the bed. She doesn't look as though she wants to hug him, or plead with him, or even hit him.

"What do you want?" Sasuke's boredom finally gets the better of him.

"I want to tell Miori that we can stop draining your chakra," she says immediately. "But I'm only going to do that when I'm convinced you're not going to leave again."

"You shouldn't have interfered," he says, still cold. "My life isn't yours to play around with."

"Oh, because you were doing _such_ a great job with it yourself," she snaps. "Betraying Konoha. Obsessing over killing Itachi."

"That's all I want." He wonders how many times he'll have to beat this into their heads. "That's all I'm meant for."

"We're going to help you kill your brother," she says, and even though she clearly doesn't like the words, her face is pale and set and almost frightening. "Because he's a murdering fuck and what he did to you is unforgivable, and because it's what you want. But the value of your existence -- _no_. You don't get to decide that on your own. At _least_ consider how much you're worth in Naruto's eyes, and how much you owe him for taking that away."

"I don’t owe him anything."

"Of course you do!" Sakura says, swift and defensive, and Sasuke thinks: _oh. That's new_. "When you left, we spent years defending you -- not that you deserved it, but that's what friends do -- but Naruto also spent those years forgiving you. So I don’t think you'll ever have to apologise to him, even though you certainly _owe_ it to him after almost destroying him. And I'm not just talking about the fight," she adds, "even though that was horrible of you as well."

"I don't apologise," Sasuke says, because at this point he needs to let himself get angry or he'll have to think about the implications of what she just said, and by now he's an expert at ignoring complications. Focus.

"And he knows that. And he's not expecting you to." She glares at him. "Believe me, my expectations are not nearly as generous."

He gives a cruel laugh. "Nice to hear you missed me, Sakura."

Her expression tightens and almost falters, but she catches herself. "I did," she admits. "I missed you a lot. But I worked a few things out, too."

"And now you're in love with Naruto," he tries, aiming to wound. "How pathetic."

"Perhaps." Sakura blushes and moves to the top of the bed where she's out of the mirror's path, puts her hand to his forehead, and produces a cool pulse of chakra that carries his headache away with it. "But at least I'm honest with myself about it."

"Hn." Sasuke lets his mouth move towards a smirk, refusing to rise to whatever she's trying to imply. "And if I don't agree to stay, are you just going to keep me like this forever? Seems a little sadistic for the oh-so-moral citizens of Konoha."

"I doubt it." The glance she gives him is flat and pained. "But even if you do run away, we can just summon you back. You're our teammate, and you're not leaving us again."

Above all else Sasuke hates feeling helpless, and right now the futility of his situation is almost strangling him. How dare they lift away his independence so effortlessly. How _dare_ they. "Then why bother keeping me immobile at all?"

Sakaru looks at him for a very long time, and he's almost certain that she changes her mind at least twice before speaking. "Because it's easier to hit a stationary target, Sasuke," she says finally. "You know that."

~

"Tea?"

Sasuke gives the smallest possible nod and parts his lips so that he can drink. Miori makes the best tea he's ever tasted, and it's probably a sign of how dire his situation is that the moment just before the first sip, when the aroma spills across his tongue, has become the highlight of his day. He'd forgotten how to find pleasure in small things. He's not sure if he should be worried that he's picking it up again.

"You're welcome, by the way." Miori gives him a long look that he thinks is trying to convey something beyond the sarcasm in her tone, but he can’t tell what it is. He doesn't understand women -- especially not women twice his age. "I've dealt with some uncommunicative teenagers in my time, Uchiha, but you're really something. Would it kill you to be polite?"

He leaves a chilly pause before replying. "What would be the point?"

"You're just as bad as most shinobi. Assuming a civilian couldn't possibly have anything interesting to say, or know anything about your life." Her eyes narrow; she tilts the cup again and Sasuke has to swallow in self-defence, so he can't tell her that no, actually, he assumes that about everyone. "Believe it or not, I know who you are, Uchiha Sasuke. I know you used to mean something to this village. And I know that I could be the queen of my hair salon if I were to wander in and tell the story of how I helped to bring you back here." She straightens up. "The only thing keeping your whereabouts a secret is the fact that your best friend is a very persuasive young man, and I quite like him, so perhaps you would _consider_ that for a while and then make some effort at civil conversation."

_Used_ to mean something. It shouldn't hurt; it's irrelevent, it's a complication; it hurts anyway. Sasuke surprises himself by having a very Naruto-like urge to retaliate by insinuating that she doesn't look as though she's ever set foot inside a hair salon. Luckily, it passes and is replaced by the twinned angry realisations that she's probably right, and that the blond idiot has added yet another person to the list of those willing to defend him, to do things for him, and to act against their judgement. If he keeps up this eerie ability to attract loyalty, Sasuke thinks with an unpleasant jolt, he might even make a half-decent Hokage.

"All right," he says. Three grudging seconds go by before he can bring himself to add, "Sorry."

"I really don't know what they see in you, Uchiha." Miori's face has softened somewhat. "But they're not completely devoid of reason, so there must be something."

"It's my personality."

"Oh, I see." Her eyebrows are up and Sasuke regrets making the joke but it's been so long, _so long_ with just his own thoughts swirling and learning to create black humour out of blacker situations so that he didn't go completely mad, and maybe it's all right to relax a bit if the conversation doesn't matter anyway.

Just to be safe, though, he restricts himself to monosyllables until she gives him the last of the rice and leaves with the dishes.

~

"Fine," is the first thing Naruto says, the next time he walks into the room. "If you're not going to talk, I will."

Sasuke makes a quick decision.

"What makes you think I'm not going to talk?" He pitches it perfectly: bored, dismissive, as though Naruto is a minor nuisance to be entertained.

"Oh." Now he looks uncertain. "Well...okay. We need to talk, then."

"I don't have anything to say to you."

"But you just said --" Naruto stops short, completely flustered. This really is too easy, Sasuke thinks. "Damn you! I had a speech all ready, and now I've totally lost it."

"That was the point, idiot." Sasuke sighs. "I assume your speech was yet another attempt to tell me that I can't go after my brother on my own."

"Yes!" Naruto leaps on this. "I mean, no! You can't! Are you stupid? Itachi is...you could die!"

That's nothing new. Some of the best strategies Sasuke has considered have been those involving mutual destruction. He manages the facial equivalent of a shrug. "So be it."

Naruto folds his arms and glares. "No. Unacceptable."

"What?" Sasuke's disbelief comes out as something close to laughter; nasty laughter, at that. Good.

"You're -- do you even realise how selfish you are? Talking about your death like you're the only person it would affect? Fuck, Sasuke." His glare gets even worse. "You were ours and you _left_ us, you went running off to give your body to Orochimaru as though you were the only person who cared about it -- your life, I mean, not your -- never mind." He visibly pulls that sentence up short, slightly pink. "You've been acting as though it's possible to sever bonds from one side just by walking away, but it's _not_ , you're going to leave people behind who can't drop everything that easily. And apparently I have all this adolescent anger and -- and unresolved attachment, or something, and rivalry, and if you'd stayed we could have worked through it like everyone else did with their weird issues -- well, sort of -- but instead you left me with a _hitai-ate_ and _feelings_ and _nothing else_ , and I've been carrying on a relationship all by myself for all this time and you know what, I'm sick of having to do both sides of the arguments."

He takes a huge breath and adds, "And Sakura was very upset as well."

And, "I've been in love with you for four years, you _bastard_."

And, "You just -- just --" Naruto slams the side of his fist against the wall, and Sasuke can feel the resultant vibrations all along his body. "You just lie here and think about what you've done!"

He storms out of the room, leaving Sasuke wondering if the chakra drain has suddenly targeted his lungs, because for a long long moment he can't breathe at all.

~

If pressed Sasuke might admit to being just as obstinate as his best friend; of course, it would take a miracle for him to admit that he _has_ a best friend, or any friends at all, but he's neither blind nor hollow. Just adept at putting certain parts of his life into boxes and not letting them interfere with the important things.

But he's obstinate, yes -- certainly he tries his best not to think about his own actions at all, simply because Naruto _told_ him to think about them. Instead he tries to think about killing Itachi and then about half-killing the Uzumaki and then he tries counting backwards from five hundred, but he ends up thinking about the past anyway -- unsurprisingly, the first conclusion he comes to is that Sakura really knew what she was talking about when she mentioned stationary targets. Without the constant training that he is accustomed to there is nothing to focus his attention on, and no matter how hard he tries to avoid it their voices keep slipping through the silence and into his mind.

_You're going to leave people behind who can't drop everything that easily._

_I don’t think you'll ever have to apologise to him._

Which is true, as far as he can tell. Naruto still looks at him as though he's the strangest and most frustrating thing in the world, and that hooking blue gaze certainly wants something from him, but Sasuke doesn't think it's an apology. He doesn't know what it is. Or perhaps he does, now.

At some stage or other during the past couple of years Sasuke has considered how everything in his life could be turned to his advantage, if his mission to kill his brother required it. He's always known, on one level, that if he needed Naruto to fall in love with him then it wouldn't be very difficult to accomplish. But seeing as all of his efforts so far have been to drive him away, he never considered the fact that it might have already happened: a long time ago, without his deliberation or consent.

_I've been carrying on a relationship all by myself for all this time._

Sasuke thinks about months spent training himself hard enough to ensure that he was too exhausted to dream about the past, and the way Naruto stood very still under the blade of his katana, and then he starts counting backwards again, because if he's been in a _relationship_ all this time and nobody has told him about it he's going to be really fucking pissed off.

~

" _You killed Orochimaru?_ " Naruto yells. He and Sakura barrel into the room in an untidy mass of limbs, their eyes comically wide.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Sakura slams her hands onto her hips. "Bad enough it was a huge shock, but then we had to _stand_ there and try to act curious as Tsunade told us about how all the reports say nobody had heard anything of you since, as if you'd just _vanished_ , and you know this idiot can't act to save his life --"

"Hey!"

"Yes," Sasuke says, to shut them up. "I did. It was easy," he adds in a careless monotone, because it'll annoy Naruto.

Sure enough, the blond scowls immediately. "You still think you're so much stronger than me? You think we won't be able to help you kill Itachi? I killed an Akatsuki member!" He waves his bandaged hand for emphasis. "And so did Sakura! I mean, a different Akatsuki member!"

"Not on my own." Sakura looks embarrassed. "Anyway, I think Tsunade still thinks we were acting strange, I have to go distract her -- I can't _believe_ you didn't tell us, Sasuke!" She kicks the wall, which creaks dangerously, and then dashes out of the room. Sasuke exhales in something like relief, shaken more than he'll admit by these particular revelations. Even if they're nowhere near Itachi's level, he knows that anyone from Akatsuki would be difficult to kill.

"I bet I'm almost as strong as you are," Naruto mutters. "Get used to the idea." He's drawn a little of the green chakra into his own hands and is pulling it from palm to palm. "Doesn't it feel weird to be able to see it?"

"Not really." Sasuke watches him, impassive; so strange to see his own chakra under someone else's control, even if Naruto can't actually use it for anything.

"Oh, right. Your Sharingan." He shrugs and dips his fingers into the water, letting the chakra melt off under the surface. "Weird for me, though."

"About what you said yesterday," Sasuke says flatly, hoping like hell that Naruto will catch on to what he's talking about and not make him actually say it, but determined to quash this particular tactic before it escalates.

"Oh." Damn it, that defiant look is the most irritating thing in the world, but it still tugs at Sasuke's conviction like a magnet. "Yes. Apparently you screwed me over so much that I'll never get over you. Happy?"

_No_ , Sasuke wants to say, but he's more shaken than angry so instead he says, "Take it _back_ , moron," and hears his voice tilt.

"Sasuke." Naruto makes an annoyed sound and sits down on the edge of the bed. "Have I ever taken back my words?"

"Hn." Sasuke doesn't want to agree, but something -- relief, perhaps -- stops him from taking the easy way out and claiming absence, claiming _I don't know_. He knows Naruto and that's enough.

"So!" He nods, satisfied. "Don't expect me to start now."

Sasuke thinks again about Naruto's habit of gathering people, inspiring them -- all this extrinsic social weaponry combined with the Kyuubi and his own bewildering ability to substitute sheer stubbornness for actual talent -- hell, he could probably take over the world simply by talking people around to his side, and he's chosen to ally himself and all his power with _Sasuke_ , what a _fucking_ waste, and Sasuke has never known why until this moment. For a split second he is furious that so much should be given for so little; he wants to tell Naruto to be more careful.

"Anyway," Naruto continues, "I've been thinking about what you said about having to kill Itachi yourself, and...well, I thought you didn't want to give him the satisfaction of doing things his way."

Ice crawls down Sasuke's spine. "What?"

Naruto takes a deep breath. "Itachi kept you alive and left these ideas in your head that your only purpose was be some kind of lonely pursuer of vengeance, right? I'm sure he'd absolutely hate it if you showed him that he _hadn't_ managed to completely screw up your life. That you can find a purpose beyond killing him, and that you still have friends who care about you and will help you."

"It's no good." Sasuke closes his eyes because he has to put this aside, he _has_ to, and he can't when Naruto is looking at him like that, and all he has left is honesty. "I can't drag you around with me. I can't hold onto that era of my past. Everything about me has to be my hatred for Itachi or I'll never be strong enough."

"Oh, that is such bullshit."

Sasuke's eyes snap open. Naruto has paled, but his expression is no less fierce.

"The bonds you have in Konoha mean you have _help_ , Sasuke. They mean more chance of success, not less. And if Itachi's told you any different, well, I don't know why you believe a single word he says! He's a killer and he's fucking crazy and he lies --"

"He's my brother!" Sasuke snarls.

"No!" Naruto snarls back, and Sasuke's throat constricts in alarm, because there is something completely wild in his anger. "He _isn't_. Not in any of the ways that count."

If he could move, Sasuke is sure he would be almost trembling with rage and with something quieter, deeper, darker. Naruto never had an older brother. There's no way he can explain that even though he hates Itachi with all of his soul, despises him -- and is going to kill him, without a doubt -- he can't suppress that one tiny part of him that hangs on every word out of Itachi's mouth, every glance, every gesture that indicates that Sasuke might be in some way worthy of his attention.

"You can’t understand," is all he says.

"Try me."

Sasuke closes his eyes again.

"Fine." He hears Naruto stand up to leave. "Maybe I don’t know much about you and Itachi. But I do know that if you let someone else dictate all the rules of your fight, then you've already lost."

~

"Do you mind if I draw you while we talk?"

"That's right, you're the artist." Sasuke gives him a disgusted look. "Why are you here? You can't expect me to believe that you give a shit about my staying in Konoha or otherwise."

Sai smooths his hand over a fresh sheet of paper. It's a practiced, absent gesture that's totally at odds with the painstakingly polite smile on his face. "I was curious to see how you've changed. Try not to move, please."

Sasuke adds a venemous layer to the disgusted look. "Ha ha."

"Oh." He blinks at the mirror and the chakra stream as though seeing them for the first time. "That was a redundant request. I apologise."

"Why would I have changed?"

"I have noticed that Naruto tends to change people. I find it interesting. You're already talking more." Sai makes a few careful lines, his glance darting from Sasuke to the paper and back again. "You still don't smile."

"You smile enough for both of us," Sasuke shoots back, aware of how juvenile he sounds.

"It's to make people like me." Sai pauses in his drawing and for a moment something frank and genuine peeks through in his manner. "Maybe you should try it. Not many people like you around here."

"I don't care if people like me."

"That is an uncommon attitude." He sounds curious. "So far I have encountered a total of two people who admit to liking you. This doesn't concern you at all?"

Sasuke wishes that he wasn't a teenage boy, because something in him stands up and makes frantic grasping _who who who_ motions when it hears statements like that. He ignores it. "No."

"Hmm. I can't tell if you're lying." Sai changes to a coloured pencil; his smile never flickers. "Naruto likes you. And Sakura likes you, but she thinks that you're not good enough for Naruto."

"I'm sure she does." Sasuke snorts. "What do _you_ think?"

"At the moment I think you might be amazingly homosexual," Sai says, his tone still impeccably polite. "Though I'm not very good at guessing these things yet, so please feel free to correct me."

Sasuke doesn't correct him, largely because it's taking every ounce of self-control he possesses not to choke on his own tongue. When he can speak properly he contents himself with: "I can't believe they picked _you_ as my replacement."

"Sakura says that Team Kakashi is required to have at least one black-haired social retard to balance out the fact that Naruto is both blindingly blond and disgustingly charismatic. But I'm not supposed to tell him that."

"Hn." Sasuke should probably feel either offended or jealous; instead he has to force himself not to laugh. "Well in that case, you're perfect."

"Thank you."

"You're a real glutton for insults, aren't you? I'm sure you just _love_ Sakura."

"I wouldn't know," Sai says calmly. "How does one know?"

Sasuke is starting to suspect that this is the whole fucking problem: he has absolutely no idea.

~

"Morning, asshole." Naruto throws himself into the seat beside the bed and stares straight ahead. His face is adorned with both a dull purple bruise and a grumpy expression.

"Did you walk into a tree?" Sasuke enquires, amused despite himself.

"Oh, shut up." Naruto sinks further down in the seat. "It was Sai. And then Sakura refused to heal me because apparently it was my own fault for being obnoxious."

"Why me?" Sasuke blurts, unsuccessful in halting yesterday's train of thought before it reaches his vocal cords. "How do you know?"

"Huh? Why you what?"

The urge to move his hand impatiently is so strong that Sasuke almost imagines that it does move, despite the evidence of his eyes. "For instance, why not...Shikamaru? Why not Sakura?"

The light dawns. "You mean, how do I know I'm in love with you __?"

"You are so slow it's a miracle you're still alive," Sasuke tells him. Then, after a lengthy pause -- "I mean, yes."

"Oh." Naruto blinks, his hands folding absently over each other. Sasuke notices that his right arm is no longer wrapped in bandages. "Well, you just _know_ , don't you? The person you love is the person you most want to protect. Does there need to be a particular why? I never really gave it much thought."

Of course you didn't, Sasuke thinks despairingly. Idiot.

"I suppose there's also the fact that you're a genius ninja."

"So by your logic," Sasuke stares at him, trying very hard not to feel flattered, "the person you love is both the person you most want to protect and the person who least needs that protection. You really are too stupid to live."

Naruto gives an infuriating smile. "Someone told me once that love defies logic."

"Really."

"Jiraiya, maybe? And you're very good-looking, of course," Naruto adds, as though it has just occurred to him. "Though not quite as pretty as Sakura."

I am an Uchiha, Sasuke tells himself. I am not vain and I do not care what I look like and I don't care what other people think I look like, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn't care what someone with _whiskers_ thought I looked like.

Having established this, he takes a slow breath, carefully banishes all hint of emotion from his voice, and says, "Hn."

Naruto's face lights up with glee. "You're...you're _jealous_!"

Sasuke glares. "I am not."

"That's fantastic!"

"You're deluded."

"And you're jealous." Pause. "Seriously, _Shikamaru_?"

"It was an example," Sasuke snaps. "Calm down."

It seems important that there should be reasons, that things should make sense. Naruto makes no sense at all, defying logic is his natural state of being, and Sasuke wants to scream because surely, _surely_ , love is more than just shrugging your shoulders and listening when an organ that was designed to pump blood tells you that it would rather stop beating than lose someone. It's overwhelmingly ridiculous, he thinks -- trying to hold onto his anger, vertiginous anxiety swirling in his stomach as though he is standing on the edge of some unknown precipice -- that you can find someone this obnoxious and still want to walk through fire to keep them alive.

"I also think you're fun to be around," Naruto offers.

Sasuke finds this very unlikely, and tells him so.

Naruto grins. "I might have a warped sense of fun."

Unfortunately, Sasuke can't argue that particular point at all, so he just raises his eyebrows until the grin starts to fade.

"Look, I don't know." Naruto all but stamps his foot in irritation. "I don’t know how to convince you. It's -- there are these moments when the world _spins_ , really spins, and it's because I can't imagine existing without you."

It's a stupid image and it makes no sense, but it manages to stop Sasuke's breath sharply in his throat, so his final argument doesn't have as much venom behind it as he'd like. "You know that I'll never say anything nice about you. Ever."

"So you're a complete bastard. I've always known that." The grin returns. "Luckily, I have enough ego for the both of us."

"You are the stubbornest, most idiotic person I've ever met," Sasuke tells him, hoping vaguely that Naruto won't pick up on the fact that he's just given in; given in on what, he's not sure, but the precipice is far behind and everything from here on in is unfamiliar open sky.

However, one of the most irritating things about Naruto has always been his ability to read Sasuke like a book at the most inconvenient times, and his face lights up in an instant. "You mean...?" He invades Sasuke's personal space in a delighted rush.

Sasuke attempts to convey death with his eyebrows. "I swear by everything holy, Uzumaki Naruto, if you sexually assualt me while I am _unable to move_ , I will murder you in your sleep."

"Yeah, but you'll still do the sleeping with me part beforehand, right?" Naruto beams.

Sasuke makes a strangled noise meant to convey incoherent fury; clearly, it fails.

"I love you."

"Get _out_."

Naruto bounds even closer and shoves his face down into Sasuke's, grinning like the maniac that he is. "I love you! Wow! I could say this for hours!"

Sasuke is about to say something along the lines of 'please don't' -- only far, far less polite -- when his gaze catches on the bruise underneath Naruto's vibrant, _ridiculous_ eyes, and it creates a pause long enough for Naruto to drop a kiss on the side of his mouth that's as sharp and light as the edge of a kunai; then he pulls back, inspects Sasuke's expression, and bursts out laughing.

"Miori!" Sasuke shouts at the top of his lungs; or rather, a slightly raised growl, as the muscles around his lungs are just as unwilling to exert themselves as the ones in his limbs. "Get him out!"

"Miori's --" Naruto takes a deep breath and manages to stop laughing. "She's gone shopping. Sasuke, your face --"

"Uzumaki, get out of this room right now." Sasuke glares at the almost-Sand-symbol on the ceiling and tries to pretend that he's not the same shade as Sakura's hair. Having swiftly passed the stage of anger where he would normally have stopped speaking entirely, he is quite certain that only his inability to respond with violence is forcing him to articulate his feelings instead. He absolutely hates it. He's not going to say another word.

"But I don't --"

" _Now_."

~

After a humiliation of that magnitude, giving his word that he won't try to kill Itachi without letting them come along is almost easy; besides, somewhere along the way he has discovered that he is no longer prepared to die in the attempt. His brother is going to die: that is not and has never been up for debate. _He_ , however, is not. That would give Itachi far too much pleasure.

"Try standing," Sakura says, having gone up and down his body with some odd medical jutsu that made his muscles twitch.

Sasuke levers himself upwards and shifts from one foot to the other, convincing his body that it remembers how to balance, irrationally and gloriously pleased at the feel of the floor under his feet. "You mean I should be able to control my movements now?"

Sakura nods. "Your body is still getting used to holding a normal amount of chakra, so I wouldn't try anything too complicated, but your limbs should work just fine."

"Good," Sasuke says, and punches Naruto in the face as hard as he can. Which is, disappointingly, not very hard at all. Barely adequate recompense for abduction, imprisonment and sexual assault.

Sakura looks Sasuke in the eye, gives a burst of laughter, and then hastily swallows it as she leans down to help Naruto, who straightens up looking somewhere between kicked-puppy and demon-fox. It's a surprisingly effective look for him.

"Sakura," he whines. "Can I hit him back?"

"No." Sakura bats his hands away from his face and inspects it. "He needs to recover. Without further injuries. And you're fine, by the way, so stop being such a baby."

"But --"

"Oh, no. I'm not getting involved yet." She raises her hands and heads for the door. "This one's up to you two. And I expect you to work things out, because if you're still behaving like sullen brats when I see you next, I'll throw _both_ of you through the nearest wall."

"She can actually do that now," Naruto mutters. "It's unfair. Almost as unfair as not being allowed to hit back just because someone's --"

Sasuke tries to punch him again but this time he's lost the element of surprise and his reflexes are still nowhere near as lively as Naruto's, so the other boy dodges it easily.

"Try not to kill each other!" Sakura says loudly, and closes the door behind her.

Sasuke thinks fast: no chance of beating him, not in his current condition, and he has no illusions about Naruto's willingness to follow orders when it comes to inadvisable fights. He needs something unexpected. Something to put him on the upper footing.

"Hey, Naruto," he says, and the look on Naruto's face at hearing his own name is half the battle won already. Without stopping to second-guess himself -- or first-guess, if he's honest -- Sasuke takes a fast step forward while Naruto is still too surprised to move, grabs at the fabric of his shirt, and pulls him into a kiss.

He doesn't really know what he was expecting -- for it to be a fight, perhaps, or for Naruto to run around crowing and insisting that he's the best kisser in the _world_ and he could beat Sasuke _any_ day -- but Naruto just gives a satisfied hum of laughter and tugs him even closer. When his hands touch Sasuke's arms the first instinct is to strike out; the second, to close his eyes; then all Sasuke can grasp at are stupid plant metaphors, as though deep down inside his cool impenetrable silences there still dwell the withered stems of Uchiha Sasuke, teenage boy, and Uchiha Sasuke, the person who heard an admission of love but hasn't started running yet.

"Stop," Sasuke manages, and, "why are you..." and then Naruto put a hand at the back of his neck and something bright and delicate breaks open inside his chest. It's like an unfurling; like cold water; like his lungs pulled tight by rows of brilliant embroidery, all the air expelled. Still part of him thinks, _run_ , and another part adds, _or forever hold your peace, Uchiha_ , and Sasuke weighs his future in hands which are clenched tight around orange fabric and thinks, with every single cell of his body and every pulse of chakra: I'm already running towards something. I'm just a bit fucking sick of running away as well.

The most infuriating thing is that Sasuke shouldn't be getting delicate plant-feelings and surges of warmth from something this awkward. Because it _is_ awkward; Sasuke's never kissed anyone before, though he has a working knowledge of the theory, and Naruto...well, Naruto's always been one for enthusiasm over finesse, so Sasuke can't really make any judgement calls about his experience. For a while, then, kissing seems like a strange accident of anatomy and physics, an accident from which they could recover at any moment if either of them were the type to give up on something first. But they're ninjas and they know the rhythms of each other's bodies, and they've never needed words to express the things that actually matter, and so eventually it clicks; all of a sudden Sasuke opens his mouth just a little further and Naruto tilts his chin at just the right angle and then it stops being something ridiculous and wet, and starts being communication. After all this time with only furious, inadequate words to convey his meanings, Sasuke finds it wonderful: with the press of his thumbs against Naruto's jaw he can start to explain his grudging gratitude, and in the pauses between kisses he can hear Naruto's reproof -- _I missed you, you selfish bastard_ \-- as clear as day.

Cold cold water and Sasuke feels drowned in it, and it takes a while for him to realise that it's not a metaphor, nor a sensation that’s even remotely romantic; he's breathing too seldom and too shallowly and his body, still recovering, buckles in protest at the lack of oxygen.

"Shit," Sasuke mutters as his legs sway and he almost falls. Naruto grabs at his arms and keeps him upright.

"So," Naruto says, when they've regained their balance. "I make you go weak at the knees, huh?"

Sasuke considers another punch, or maybe a headbutt -- he could probably break the idiot's nose from this angle -- but Naruto looks more dazed than smug, so he decides not to waste his energy.

"Fuck off, Uzumaki," he says, and bites down hard on Naruto's lower lip. Naruto growls and shoves forwards and maybe Sasuke will be able to manage this after all, because it's just like anger only easier. His back slams against the wall and the air jerks out of his mouth in something that's almost a laugh, something that Naruto swallows and then echoes with a gasp of his own. Back and forth, sparks and competition -- oh, he remembers how this feels, this brilliant and consuming rivalry, and Sasuke has always found pleasure in the quick mastery of a new skill. Like the most fluid and automatic jutsu it seems to be something that can be killed by too much thought, so he surrenders carefully to his body and his instinct and slips his fingers down the collar of Naruto's top, brushing against the heated skin over the rapid pulse, seeking the necklace and looping it around one fingertip.

Naruto hisses something under his breath that sounds very rude indeed, but the last syllable disappears as he presses five urgent kisses in quick succession against Sasuke's mouth, and then leans their foreheads together and exhales. His breath ghosts against Sasuke's wet lips and creates a cool tingling

"You're here." Naruto moves back a little and stares straight at him with a joy that is familiar and yet entirely new; Sasuke has never forgotten the simplicity of his emotion, but there's something mature and wistful darkening its edges, something bizarrely comforting.

He _has_ grown up, Sasuke realises, moving his hand from the necklace to tangle in the hair at the back of Naruto's head. He truly has.

"You're actually..." But instead of finishing the sentence Naruto splays a warm hand against Sasuke's arm and then moves it, keeps moving -- just brief, wondering touches, never twice in the same place, as though Sasuke is a piece of clay to be shaped under his hands. Shoulder. Collarbone. Jaw. Sasuke keeps his eyes open because a ninja's reaction to an unanticipated touch is difficult to suppress at the best of times, and he remembers his fight against the last worker of clay and thinks, _certainly I won't be at all surprised_ \-- forehead -- _if one of these touches_ \-- lips -- _renders me explosive_. Then all of a sudden both of Naruto's hands move under the loose fabric of his shirt with deadly symmetry, fingernails grazing his stomach.

" _Hn_." And with his hand tightening in Naruto's hair and his whole body aching with the effort it takes to hold still, Sasuke is almost too distracted to care that this particular 'hn' is a whole octave higher than normal, and that it sounds embarrassingly like 'I can no longer form coherent words' instead of his usual 'this is all the vocal effort I can be bothered to expend on someone like you'.

Naruto is laughing again; Sasuke grits his teeth and says, "Just -- just hold _still_ , you idiot," and then kisses him with everything he's got. Apparently it's enough: Naruto's hands clench into surprised fists in the small of Sasuke's back, but they do stop moving, and after a moment they relax into a possessive pressure. Sasuke feels the lips aginst his curve into that stupid fox-grin and he yanks on Naruto's hair in response, creating tiny transient distances that Naruto closes again and again, each time the press of his lips and the sweep of his tongue more insistent, the ragged catch of his breath more audible. _Fuck_ , Sasuke thinks, not sure whether he should feel triumphant or terrified, and rapidly losing the ability to make the distinction. _Oh, fuck._

Having only just admitted to a tentative approval of more physical contact than he's tolerated for years -- for his whole damn life, come to that -- Sasuke is surprised at the strength of his own disappointment and annoyance when Naruto finally pulls away, leaving almost a foot of empty space between them.

"Look, Sasuke." The sudden change in Naruto's manner takes him aback: he's less confident, averting his gaze and speaking fast and low, almost as though he's trying to get through a rehearsed speech and expects to be interrupted at any moment. "I -- I realise I've been a bit flippant about the whole thing, but you know me, and...well, I think that's the point. You know me. And I know _you_ , and it's not just that you're an amazing shinobi or that looking at you right now makes my _teeth_ hurt, I want you so badly, it's that I spent years fighting to have you back and I'd do it again, I'd spend my whole life chasing you if I had to. Because you're my family, and...a lot of people are forced to settle for a lot less than what we have, and between the two of us we've been forced through enough already, I think. So I've decided that I'm not going to settle. And I'm not going to let you settle either."

Sasuke feels like he's been dropped from a great height; this is an attack against which he has nothing to defend himself with, nothing to summon, and the Sharingan would show him nothing more than what he sees now: Naruto staring at a point over his shoulder, full of fierce determination, almost fucking _glowing_ with it.

Naruto continues, "I know I kind of shoved this at you and I know you hate talking about emotions, so you're probably about to glare at me and then leave without saying anything, but maybe you could -- maybe you could not. Just this once."

It's meaningless, of course: Sasuke knows that if he stays this time he will stay the next time, and every time hereafter. _Forever hold your peace_. He looks at the stubborn set of Naruto's jaw, the uncertainty in his far-focused eyes, and realises that he has just admitted to the existence of a hereafter. Itachi dead. Itachi dead _and then --_

Naruto quirks a look at him, curious, impatient -- Naruto, who spent years forgiving him so that he would never have to apologise -- and Sasuke's heart is warm and violent in his chest. It hurts terribly, so maybe it's love after all.

"Just this once," he says.

~

"Here."

Sasuke stares down at the faded fabric and runs the tip of one finger over the sharp groove that slices through the Konoha spiral.

"You idiot," he says eventually. "You complete and utter idiot."

Naruto grins. "You're welcome."

~

"-- and Sai thinks he might have come up with a way to use the chakra drain as a portable weapon against the Sharingan, so they're going to work on that, and I told her that you've given your word and we're shinobi, that should be enough, and then she said something about trusting you as far as she could throw you but that's _really far_ , trust me, so I'm sure it'll be okay once you talk to her --"

Sasuke would be listening and maybe allowing himself to feel a bit nervous at the prospect of being grilled by the Fifth Hokage, no matter how much sweet-talking Naruto has done on his behalf, but Naruto is saying all of this in one languid rambling breath with his arm slung warm around Sasuke's shoulders and his mouth pressed just under Sasuke's jaw, the words buzzing against his skin, so he keeps losing his train of thought.

"-- agreed to pass on all the intelligence that Konoha's allies have gathered about Akatsuki, because a little more knowledge can't hurt you." Naruto kisses his neck once more and then pulls away. "Man," he says in a fervent tone, "We should have kidnapped you _months_ ago. Think of all the sex we could have been having."

He's glowing again, all smiles and loose limbs and wide eyes the colour of the sky after rain, but Sasuke swallows down the bizarre urge to lick his collarbone and whacks him on the arm instead.

"Ow! Will you stop doing that? First Sakura, and now you." Naruto looks at him balefully. "When I'm Hokage, I'm going to issue a decree against hitting me."

"You're just lucky I'm very possibly in love with you, Uzumaki," Sasuke snaps, "because otherwise I'd be using Chidori. Please take this as a statement of how annoying I find you as a human being."

Naruto's stare is so wide-eyed and prolonged that Sasuke has time firstly to curse himself for ruining a perfectly good insult by adding a very unwise prefix, and then to brace himself for the inevitable reaction of ear-shattering enthusiasm. But it doesn't come.

"Right," and Naruto gives a slow burning smile that makes Sasuke's stomach clench. "I'll keep that in mind. Coming?"

Sasuke looks at the door. He is an Uchiha. He doesn't care if people talk. He doesn't care what anyone thinks of him -- well. Almost anyone.

"If I leave, you'll just summon me again." He doesn't even bother to make it a question.

Naruto drums his fingers on Sasuke's shoulders, looking thoughtful, then leans up to kiss him very slowly, a soft open-mouthed thing that he sort of sighs into. _Then_ he does something fast with his tongue that makes Sasuke's brain short-circuit for a brief moment.

"Nice try." Sasuke pushes him away. "I'm not going anywhere, you idiot, I'm just saying that it's unfair that you can always get me back, when I have no such guarantee where you're concerned."

"Oh, Sakura would give you a hand," Naruto says cheerfully. "If I left _you_ , after all we went through to get you back, she'd help Miori find a way to summon me and then probably beat me half to death with her fists. And then heal me. And then beat me some more."

Sasuke can feel the side of his mouth curving upwards for the first time in...he doesn't know how long. He presses his lips together to quash it, because they're still arguing and he's still going to win. "I see."

Naruto heaves a melodramatic sigh that renders him twelve years old again. Sasuke is no longer twelve, so he doesn't roll his eyes in response, but he's certainly tempted. "And if it's really that important to you -- oh! I know!"

"No," Sasuke says immediately, recognising his expression. "Whatever you're thinking, _no_."

"Wait here!" Naruto dashes into the next room and starts rummaging through one of Miori's cupboards.

"No," Sasuke says again, but he is all too aware of the futility of that word when it comes to Uzumaki Naruto.

"If you want to be able to summon something instantly, you have to make a contract with it," Naruto calls, as though continuing a lecture. "Like Kakashi's with dogs. Or mine with the frogs. Then you just have to use blood to sign, and blood to summon."

Sasuke frowns. "I don't think it works for people."

"It doesn't, but that's not the point." Naruto returns with a pen and a jar of ink, which he sets down beside him as he kneels on the floor. He reaches up and takes hold of Sasuke's wrist; Sasuke tries to jerk it away but Naruto jerks back, his eyes narrowing, and Sasuke kneels down opposite him because it seems easiest just to give in on this one.

So for the next ten minutes he watches as Naruto bites the end of the pen and then writes out what Sasuke assumes is a fair approximation of a summoning contract, in the space between the elbow of his left hand and the seals for summoning weapons. The pen's brush touches his forearm in cool dabs and the drying ink makes his skin itch, but he watches Naruto's face and doesn’t say a word. Naruto writes his own name onto Sasuke's skin with an intent expression on his face, cupping his arm with gentle fingers, and for no particular reason Sasuke remembers: _you're my family_.

He calls up Itachi's face in his mind, lets the hatred rise in his chest for a moment, and then thinks: no. No, I don't want to settle. I want to see what happens next.

"Okay, that should do it."

"You realise," Sasuke says, raising his eyebrows, " _you_ , being neither a giant frog nor a metal object, that this is utterly pointless?"

"It's a gesture, you bastard." Narato glares and jabs the pen at him. "Don’t ruin it. Now bite your finger."

Sasuke hesitates, then regrets it: Naruto makes an impatient grab at his hand and lifts it to his own mouth. Just as Sasuke is considering zapping him in the face with just a _little_ bit of Chidori, he makes a pleased noise and slips Sasuke's forefinger between his lips. Sasuke's stomach does the clenching thing again; Naruto bites down and the clenching is joined by blood rushing upwards and downwards all at once.

The cut is clean and neat, and when Naruto smiles his teeth are sharper than usual, his eyes not quite their usual blue. He keeps tight hold of Sasuke's bleeding finger and presses it against the contract, then releases it. "It's meaningless unless you sign it yourself."

Sasuke stares for a moment at the boy and the flickers of the Kyuubi behind his tight grin, and realises anew that there are many people who would do anything, _anything_ to possess this, and Sasuke is being given it for no more than a few drops of blood and the heart that drives them.

He swallows hard, and signs.

Naruto nods. "There."

"You're a freak," Sasuke tells him.

"Yeah, well." Naruto tilts his forearm into the light, smiling; smudged ink and darkening blood and suddenly the gesture doesn't seem so stupid any more, it seems huge and dizzying and right. "I'm your freak now, so you'd better get used to me."

The world spins.

Sasuke smiles.


End file.
